


soul kitchen

by ohmygodwhy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Consent Issues, Drug Addiction, Falling In Love, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Self-Discovery, Underage Drug Use, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-07 08:23:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: He trips on acid for the first time at fourteen, leaves home at nineteen and meets Dave at thirty. Give or take.(klaus, his love life, and maybe the love of his life, too.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me, writing like 8k words of run-on sentences instead of studying for my physics test: ...........it's self care
> 
> warning for some consent issues (due to drugs/alcohol/etc) even tho nothing is detailed. tua's soundtrack continues to absolutely slap.

 

As a kid, Klaus didn’t get to see very many movies in theaters, ‘cause Dear Old Dad worked them hard, like they were adults, and so he didn’t like them doing regular kid stuff.

Because they _weren’t regular children,_ they were _extraordinary, and didn’t have time for trivial things,_ like watching movies or going to the park or crying or generally acting like children. Perfectly reasonable things, like having a fear of dead people yelling at him, were brushed off as _childish,_ which okay, whatever. The old bastard probably hadn’t been a kid in like, eighty years, so it was no wonder he didn’t remember what it felt like.

He never did normal dad things like being kind to them or taking them to the movies, so, as in most things, Klaus took it upon it himself to do it instead. He convinces Ben to sneak out with him, when they’re both twelve years old and still kinda dumb, because back then Ben was always easy to convince. He always went along with Klaus’ stupid ideas - and Klaus has had a lot of those, over the years - which was something Klaus was grateful for. It got them in trouble half the time, but the other half the time, it didn’t.

So he convinces Ben to sneak out with him after they’re all supposed to be in bed - and by now Klaus already has a step-by-step, perfect way to sneak out without being caught, as long as they’re quiet. There’s a movie theater like three blocks away, and once they get past the gate they run all the way there. Klaus stole some money from wherever he could find it - and people really should be smart enough to not leave their cash lying around - and he uses it to buy two tickets to _Lilo & Stitch _, because it’s the only poster that doesn’t look like a dramatic action or horror movie. And that movie makes him cry! Like, real tears! It’s crazy!

He loves it, loves the whole Movie Going Experience, with the popcorn and the huge movie screens and everything. Fuck the Umbrella Academy, he thinks, he’s gonna be an actor or something!

He doesn’t become an actor or something, but he and Ben do manage to sneak out to the movies at least five more times before Pogo catches them. Once, it’s a Classic Movie Night, or something, and Titanic is the only thing playing. He could do without the sex scene - Ben covers his eyes the whole time and it’s hilarious - but young Leonardo DiCaprio, with his whole haircut and cigarette thing going on, catches his eye more than Kate Winslet does.

He doesn’t think about it much, but when he does think about it, he thinks about the actor’s hands, and the way his hair fell in his eyes, and how well he held a cig in his mouth while he talked. Klaus didn’t know if he wanted to be with him or if he wanted to _be_ him.  

So maybe that was his Gay Awakening - ‘cause he hears people talk about that all the time, the actor or movie or whatever the hell that opened their eyes to their homosexual tendencies. But then he thinks about the cute lead singer of a band Allison likes, or Captain America, or even the senator’s boy in England that one time, and thinks that it wasn’t one big thing that opened his eyes. His eyes never had to be opened - that’s just how he always was. And besides, it’s not like Kate Winslet didn’t catch his eye at all - he totally liked the dress she was wearing at the end, even though it was super tragic and sad.

It was like - kind of the same thing, actually. He didn’t know if he wanted to get with her, or if he wanted to _be_ her - wanted to dress up and be rich and meet a dashing young boy who would rescue him from his evil, evil fiance. He wonders who would be the evil fiance in his situation. His dad? It would have to differ in the details, he decides; it could be more Rapunzel-esque, and his dashing young love interest could save him from his evil, evil adoptive father, and hopefully they would have a better ending than Rose and Jack.

It would probably be better to be Rose, because at least she lived in the end. He can think of a lot of ways that he doesn’t want to die, and freezing to death in below zero water is way near the top of the list, now. And plus, Rose didn’t even have to see and hear the hundreds of people who died with Jack - Klaus thinks that if he were there, he would rather be one of the dead ones than have to listen to hundreds of ghosts crying about how cold the water is, or how afraid they are, or how they’re too young to die. Ghosts right after a tragedy are the worst, but if he was Rose and not himself, he wouldn’t even have to deal with that.

He can’t ever really be Rose, though, and he realizes this when Dad locks him in the mausoleum with a bunch of corpses and shit. He realizes it when he claws at the door until he accepts that he won’t be able to get it open, when he claps his hands over his ears and the yelling doesn’t ever stop, when he yells and yells and nobody comes to get him out. He can’t ever be Rose, or Rapunzel, or even Jack, because he’s never gonna be able to get out of here, and there’s no one coming to rescue him.

 

When they're maybe eleven, give or take, Dad takes them all to this fancy ass party out in England, which might be where he's from and might not be because it's not like he ever tells any of them anything important. He does tell them to be polite and sit up straight and do not, Number Four, start talking to a ghost in front of everyone, because the rest of us see only air. Dad doesn't want Klaus to sound crazy in front of the Fancy English People. 

Ben is nervous the whole way there, the way he is whenever they do Public Things, his fingers perpetually catching on the hem of Klaus' sleeve. They have to be dressed up all fancy, too, 'cause it's a fancy party, and the uniform blazer he's wearing is stiff and makes him feel compacted, like he's wrapped up too tight. Everything's big - like, if he thought the house was big, it's a cottage compared to this place - and everything's shiny. And expensive-looking. 

"How big do you think this place is?" he asks everyone, generally. No one answers, all of them too busy oo-ing and ahh-ing at all the columns and fancy plates behind glass, and things like that. 

They have to go to this fancy dinner, too, where adults - Important Adults, with titles like Senator and Minister - talk about them like they aren't sitting right there. There's this boy sitting across from Klaus, a little older-looking, with this dark hair and a nose that tilts up at the end, and when he looks up at him, Klaus feels himself go red. Which is weird, because Klaus is not a shy kid. He's always doing something, always has something to say. But the boy's eyes are this startling blue color, and they catch him totally off guard. They make Klaus feel small - not in the same way that Dad does, really, but in a way that makes him feel On The Spot. 

Klaus quickly looks away. 

There aren't very many places to look, now that he's trying to find one. It's either at his weird England food, or someone else's plate (which is rude), or the ceiling (which is rude) or the wall (which is boring). He could close his eyes, but that would probably be rude, too, and then Dad would make a big deal about Klaus disrupting dinner, or something, and it would be twelve times more embarrassing with the boy - Oliver? Christopher? he hears someone call him some British sounding name with an "er" sound at the end - watching him do it. 

He risks a glance up, and probably-Oliver is looking at him, this amused little smile on his face. Klaus looks away again. 

He spends the rest of the night trying to avoid catching Oliver's eye, and Oliver spends the rest of the night trying to catch his. It's this weird sort of game, that Klaus has never played before. He's never really been one to  _avoid_ talking to people - he loves to talk to people, especially people outside the Academy, where he can hear about stuff that doesn't happen in there. 

At the end of the night, after the meal is finally over, Oliver manages to catch him before Klaus has a chance to slip out the door. "I like your blazer," he says, young and confident and probably the most boring compliment in the world, and suddenly Klaus doesn't feel so trapped in it. 

"Thanks," he says, "I like your hair."

Oliver smiles at him again, and then Klaus has to leave. He doesn't know if he's relieved or not to finally be able to breathe right. 

(He doesn't see Oliver again, but he does accidentally tell the world he might've had a crush on him a few years later, so. Sorry, Oliver.)

 

He goes to a bar the first time at fourteen, storms out the door after a fight with Luther about being more respectful at dinner, or whatever the fuck else he was doing wrong. Luther was Number One, and he had a giant stick up his ass because of it, like it was His Job to tell everyone else what to do. Diego usually had more of a problem with it than Klaus did, and never wasted an opportunity to make that known, but Klaus wasn’t even being disrespectful! He just asked Ben what book he was reading, and he made sure the joint he was rolling was under the table and everything!

Luther yells _“Klaus!”_ behind him, with that stupid Authoritative, Listen To Me Cause I’m Number One voice. Klaus hates when he says that name like that, so he ignores it, grabs his jacket and leaves. Once he gets past the gates, he runs, except Ben isn’t with him this time so it isn’t fun at all.

He makes it to the bar down in the deeper part of the city, a shitty one with no bouncer or anything. “You ain’t twenty one,” the bartender says when he slips in, “You ain’t even eighteen.”

“So?” Klaus asks, “I got money.”

“And I got rules.”

Klaus pulls out a hundred, slaps it on the table, and the bartender suddenly decides that his rules are dumb anyways. He’s three shots in - scotch, or vodka, something that burns going down but makes his insides all warm - when someone slides up next to him.

“Hey, little fella,” he says, an older man with a deeper voice that reverberates up Klaus’ spine. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing in a place like this?”

Klaus’ red flags shoot up immediately, raised up high enough in the sky to rival the Eiffel Tower. He’s heard about the kind of “degenerates” that wait in bars like this, and all sorts of horror stories from dad. But he’s three shots in, and his body feels warm and his head feels floaty, and the guy just called him pretty. No one’s ever called him pretty before. He’s never been wanted to be called pretty until now, but he finds that he really really wants to. Be called pretty. Be called nice. Be talked to all soft.

Klaus shrugs, “Had to get outta the house.”

The guy makes a sympathetic sound. “Troubles at home?”

Klaus nods, and his head spins, and he giggles because he’s never felt his head spin like that before. The guy braces a hand on his back to keep him from toppling over.

“Lemme buy you a drink, help you take your mind off of it.”

Klaus nods again, because another drink sounds great, and he won’t even have to pay for it this time. It’ll help drown all the other shit out - he’s all out of weed, smoked the last of it this morning, and he doesn’t even wanna think about going home right now. He thinks about his dad waiting for him, and the mausoleum waiting for him, and all the other shit waiting for him that he doesn’t wanna have to go back to.

“Hey,” the guy says to the bartender, “The kid’ll have another shot of whatever you’ve been givin’ him.”

The bartender looks at the guy all suspicious, glancing between he and Klaus, like he wasn’t the one to give him three shots like ten minutes ago. Or maybe it’s been longer, Klaus doesn’t know. But seeing another adult look at the guy like that… maybe he should keep his guard up. Dad always says to keep your guard up, in every situation — you never know when _calamity might strike,_ or when you might be blindsided or attacked or have any number of other bad shit happen to you.

“This your uncle, or something?” He asks. It takes Klaus a minute to realize the bartender’s talking to him, and not the guy.

Klaus blinks at him. “Huh?”

“Do you know this guy?”

Klaus wants to say yes, because if he does he’ll probably get another shot, and maybe he’ll get called pretty again, maybe he’ll get talked to all soft.

He must be silent a moment too long, though, because then the bartender is telling the guy with the deep voice to leave, ‘cause he _doesn’t serve no pedos in his bar._ He has standards, apparently. Klaus wonders when and where those standards stop and start, but he’s not gonna get on his case about letting him drink. He’s just fine with that, thanks very much.

He’s thinking about whether or not he’d get kicked out if he poured himself another shot instead of waiting, when someone puts a hand on his shoulder. He jumps, and the bartender says, “Kid,” behind him, so okay, that must be his hand, “You gotta go home.”

“Don’t wanna,” Klaus says.

“I’m closing up.”

“Aren’t bars like, twenty-four-seven?”

“This one ain’t.”

Klaus sniffs. “It’s not even midnight.”

“Kid,” the bartender sighs, and Klaus flinches back at the noise despite himself; he’s so jumpy, people say, so fidgety. “It’s one in the morning. I’m sure your family’s worried about you.”

Klaus almost wants to cry, but that would be stupid of him. “No they aren’t,” he says.

The man looks tired, and Klaus feels tired, and so he lets him pull him out of the bar and leans against the window as he locks it up. The glass is cool on his face.

“C’mon, kid,” he says, and tugs him away. Klaus would maybe be worried about intentions, or whatever, but then he remembers the bartender kicking that other guy out. Klaus kind of wishes he had said that yes, he did know him, because maybe he’d be a few shots drunker and having fun instead of walking in the cold. But he didn’t, so he sighs deep and long and walks anyways.

Somehow, he makes it home. He doesn’t remember most of it, but he remembers people talking, probably about him, and he remembers someone, probably Luther, scooping him up like he weighed just about nothing and stomping up the stairs. 

“Jesus,” Probably Luther says, and he starts to say something else, but by then Klaus is already asleep.

 

The first time he trips on acid is also when he’s fourteen. The guy he gets his weed from every other week tells him there’s gonna be a party that weekend, if he wants to come - he’s inviting him and everything. Klaus has never been to a normal, teen party, ‘cause Dad took them to fancy, white collar parties sometimes, where they had to sit still and be polite and disciplined and still somehow heroic at the same time, but they were never like, actual parties.

Mom threw them a party once, when they were maybe seven or eight. There was cake and those little, plastic party hats, and Klaus had snagged the purple one before anyone else could take it. But there was no weed at their seven-or-eight year old birthday party. There _will_ be weed at this one. So of course he’s going to go.

He pulls on one of the crop tops he stole from Allison, his favorite pair of pants and one of Ben’s jackets, and climbs out his window. His previous perfect step-by-step escape route was put out of commission when Pogo caught he and Ben sneaking back in after they watched Spider Man in theaters - he thinks that might’ve been their last movie. They hadn’t done anything like that in a while. Klaus decides that he’ll convince Ben to sneak out with him again soon; maybe he can ask someone at the party what good movies are out right now.

His dealer picks him up, and it’s not weird because they guy’s only a few years older than Klaus, still in high school - Klaus knows he overcharges him, but doesn’t care, mostly because it’s not his money he uses to buy from him. His car is old and kind of shitty, but it’s like the vintage kind of shitty. Or it could be, if he cleaned it up a bit. Klaus tells him this, and his dealer quirks his eyebrows and says “I offer you a ride and you call my car shitty?”

“I said it’s _vintage_ shitty. That’s a good thing.”

His dealer snorts a laugh, like Klaus says the most ridiculous shit he’s ever heard - he does that a lot, when Klaus meet him behind a grocery store two blocks away and asks where he got his sunglasses from, and does he know that it makes him look like an agent from Men In Black? Klaus has taken it as a sound of endearment, at this point.

They pull up to the party and it’s in some big house Klaus has obviously never been to before, and there are people pouring in and out of it. He tugs his pants up a bit, over the bones of his hips, and follows his dealer inside. He slaps Klaus on the shoulder and says “He’s with me,” when someone at the door gives them a Look. Klaus likes that - likes the feeling of being “with” someone, of being invited somewhere that isn’t a place he has to wear his stupid uniform blazer.

He is by far the youngest person at this party. But he supposes he looks old enough, especially with Allison’s silvery crop top and the experimental splash of eyeliner he took from the bathroom on the third floor, because people still talk to him, and dance with him, and offer him drinks and shit.

It’s super fun - he’s never met any of these people in his life! And no one here seems to recognize him as That Umbrella Kid Who Can See Ghosts, which is doing great things for his conversational skills. He’s already a little high, blowing smoke out the car window on the way here, so it’s easy to just relax and let the feel of the party blow him around. He finds out that he likes beer better than vodka, and definitely better than the sips of wine he steals at home when he can. It doesn’t taste _good,_ but at least it doesn’t dry his mouth out or burn the back of his throat.

Crossfaded and having the time of his life, he ends up dancing with this girl with pretty black hair and like three ear piercing. She says her name is Alice, or Alyssa, or something else ‘A’-sounding, and then he’s dancing with a boy who has maybe half a foot on him, and Klaus isn’t sure how old he is but he can’t be that much older, and his hand are on Klaus’ hips and it make him feel like Kate Winslet, or maybe Uma Thurman in the single scene of Pulp Fiction he managed to watch before Pogo made him turn the TV off, the one where she and the dude with the ponytail are dancing.

The guy smiles down at him and Klaus smiles back up at him, liking the way it feels, smooth and easy on his face. He feels the base of the music pumping in the back of his head instead of any sort of dead motherfucker with something to say, and all he wants to do is melt into this boy’s arms until he drowns.

“You’re not from around here, huh?” the boy asks - and he has these gorgeous brown eyes; whoever said brown eyes aren’t as pretty as blue or green or whatever the fuck was obviously tripping harder than he is right now. “You go to a different school?”

“I don’t go to any school,” Klaus says, and laughs.

“So you’re a little rebel, then,” Brown Eyes says, not really understanding that Klaus has never stepped foot in a high school in his life.

“I do like breaking rules,” Klaus says, because being a rebel sounds better than being Rapunzel. It sounds cooler, sounds more fun.

Brown Eyes smiles again, and says, “You wanna try something?”

Klaus doesn’t even ask what it is he wants him to try. He just nods, ‘cause he’s in the sky and this guy is handsome as all hell and Klaus doesn’t think he’s ever been held like this before in his life.

He walks Klaus away from the crowd, back against a wall, and pulls something out of his pocket. It looks like a little square of paper. When he asks Klaus to stick his tongue out, he finally caves and asks, “Why? What is that?”

Brown Eyes puts a hand back on Klaus’ hip and says: “It’s somethin’ that’ll change your life.”

Klaus loves the sound of that, so he tilts his head back and opens his mouth and lets the guy press the strip of acid against his tongue.

It’s a good fucking trip, his first time. Thirty minutes later and he feels _great._ Life is great, all these strangers at this party are beautiful and alive and shit, and this guy with this curly hair and pretty brown eyes making him feel like he’s melting, like - like that witch lady, in the movie about the shoes - “The Wizard of Oz!” he says out loud, and Brown Eyes laughs says “there’s no place like home,” which Klaus doesn’t understand, until he does, and then he laughs too because it just feels so good to laugh! Everything is bigger, louder, more overwhelming - he can feel the music so deep it rattles his bones.

The boy with the brown eyes kisses him hard in the corner of the living room, pressing him against the wall near a window. Klaus has never been kissed like this before, held all close, like the guy can’t get enough of him - Klaus feels like he’s spilling over, that there’s just so much of him that he can’t keep it all inside - and he loves it.

“Hey,” the boy says, “What’s your name?”

“Klaus,” Klaus says, and doesn’t even stop to think that maybe they should’ve exchanged names before they swapped spit.

“That’s a pretty name,” the boy says. Klaus opens his mouth to ask for his name in return, but then the boy leans back in, and Klaus forgets to think a moment later.

He doesn’t remember getting home, but he does remember sneaking (read: stumbling) back into the house, well into the early hours of the morning. Lucky for him, Mom doesn’t get up until just before the sun comes up, and it’s still dark outside. He has to go through the front door, because he’s high as shit but he’s still not high enough to try and climb up the side of the building right now.

He’s high enough that he can’t even be bothered to hope that no one’s awake, too elated, too happy being like, _alive_ , to worry about anything but getting up the stairs and into bed. The number of the boy he danced with is tucked into the back pocket of his jeans, and so is his usual, replenished stash of weed. He’s halfway up the stairs when someone says “Klaus?”

Klaus jumps so hard he nearly falls, and then he has to cover his mouth so he doesn’t laugh too loud and wake everyone up.

“Diego,” he says, happy to see him. He’d probably be happy to see Luther right now, and wouldn’t _that_ be crazy to feel.

“Are you high?” Diego asks, like this is new information. Maybe it is - Klaus smokes weed in his room for sure, and he’s sure the smell lingers on his clothes, but this is probably a step up.

“Yeah,” he admits, because there’s no way in hell anyone would believe otherwise.

“On what?” and his tone is all… it’s all _something_ , that Klaus doesn’t think he likes. “Is that a hickey?”

Klaus has to cover his mouth again, because “Yeah,” he says, “I think so. I met a boy, earlier. He was like… super tall. And… a great dancer.”

Diego goes from looking judgy to vaguely uncomfortable real quick. Ever since Klaus outed himself on live TV and Dad yelled at him about it for like an hour, people don’t seem to know how to behave around the subject. Usually, it would annoy him, but right now Klaus just thinks it’s kind of funny. Diego is so mean and snarky and tough, but all Klaus has to do is mention some boy that he danced with, and he suddenly doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Oh,” he says. And then, “How old was he?”

Like that matters, like that changes anything at all. “I dunno,” Klaus says, leaning back against the wall so he doesn’t lose his balance. The stairs are tilting, and he feels like he’s on one of those ship rides at amusement parks, the ones that swing back and forth; he’s never been on one, but he thinks it would feel like this. “Not that much older.”

“But definitely older?”

“Who cares? He was nice and… nice. And cute. Called me a rebel.”

Diego frowns at him, looking him up and down like he’s looking for something, some evidence or whatever the hell else. Klaus doesn’t know.

“What’re you on?” he asks, and he _definitely_ sounds judgy now. Klaus doesn’t like it, doesn’t like the way his mood dips, like his heart is weighed down and the air isn’t light anymore. Shit, and he was having _such_ a good night.

“What do you care?” he asks.

Diego frowns harder, ignoring him. “It’s not weed. D-Did that guy give it to you?”

Klaus’ mood just about plummets off the roof - he can hear it whistling lower and lower, like someone falling off a cliff in a cartoon. He waits for the little “boom” of it hitting the ground, but it doesn’t come.

“Who cares if he did? It’s not like we _did_ anything, calm down.”

“Klaus,” he says, and then quickly falls silent; there’s the squeak of a door opening. They both hold very, very still, until they hear it squeak closed again. When they don’t hear footsteps, Diego relaxes back against the frame of his door. Klaus watches his shoulders tense up and then lose their tension again, like someone pulling on a rope, or maybe a clothesline.

Diego looks at him again, mouth pressed into this pensive line, and Klaus turns to walk away.

“Klaus,” he says again, hissing it under his breath.

“What,” Klaus says, flopping back against the wall. He’s not flying high anymore; he doesn’t feel light, or free, or anything like he felt before he got home. Maybe he should’ve just slept at the party somewhere.

“You… you gotta be more careful.”

Klaus knows he might be talking about the Bar Incident, where Luther had to carry him up the stairs and into the bathroom before he puked - Klaus had practically begged Luther not to tell Dad, and the bastard had still told him anyways. He could also be talking about his TV stunt, or the blunts he rolls under the dinner table, or the boy with the pretty brown eyes he just kissed for what felt like hours.

Klaus thinks he might be right. Klaus also thinks that he doesn’t care. He felt better tonight than he had in years - maybe ever. Like, he loved going to the movies with Ben, no doubt about that, but tonight he had felt like he was floating, like nothing could ever catch him. He felt like he was on the big screen instead of watching from the audience.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. “...Don’t tell Dad,” he adds after a moment, even though he knows Diego isn’t Luther; he just needs to make sure. He doesn’t want this new thing he just experienced to be taken away from him so soon. “Please?”

Diego presses his lips into that line again, and sighs. He sounds very much older than fourteen. He’s always had this complex, Klaus thinks, this I’m Older Than You Even Though We’re The Same Age complex. Sometimes it’s annoying. Right now, it’s helpful, because Diego likes to make big deals out of things that don’t need to be made big deals of, always takes things upon himself that have no need to be taken upon by anyone. This is one of those such times.

“Fine,” he says. “Just be careful, man. There are some real psychos out there.”

“Ones that throw knives?” Klaus grins, “Or are you the only one?”

“Go to bed, Klaus,” Diego says, like he wasn’t the one keeping them both awake a moment ago. But that’s fine, Klaus lets him have this one, because Diego is keeping his secret and didn’t even find out about the acid. He’s just - doing that weird thing, where he decides to be a Big Brother, out of nowhere. It should be gone by morning, that attitude of his.

Klaus sneaks his way (read: crawls) up the stairs and makes it to his room to collapse onto his bed, just as he feels his legs give out. He isn’t feeling it as much as he was at the party, but he’s definitely still feeling it. The room spins, the posters he has tacked up on his wall despite his dad’s wishes all blur together, colorful splotches against the plain white of the walls.

He laughs, because he never noticed how much he loves colors that aren’t plain white, and lets his high carry him to sleep.

(Two days later - because he talked to Allison about it, slipping into her bedroom and whispering about a boy he met whose number he got; Allison’s the only he can gossip with about stuff like this, and Allison said to wait a day or two so he didn’t seem too desperate, even if he was.

So two days later he tries to call the boy he met at the party; he doesn’t pick up. The boy never calls back, and Klaus lights up a blunt and blows the smoke out his window, feeling like real and absolute shit, and doesn’t try again.)

 

He leaves three weeks after Ben dies. Before he leaves for good, he goes to the same bar he did when he was fourteen and gets absolutely, blackout wasted, even though Ben is telling him not to, because oh, yeah! Ben is here! But only for Klaus; only Klaus, who never wants to see ghosts, who fucking hates ghosts and the way they yell at him and want something from him that he can’t give, can see him. He doesn’t know is he even wants to see him (of course he does; when he died Klaus felt like a part of his - his heart, or his soul, or whatever it is that makes him who he is, was gone.)

Ben was the best out of all of them; Ben didn’t want to do any of the things he did, but he did it because Dad and Luther told him to do it. Ben cried when they were ten, clutching at his writhing stomach and curled up on his bed, and Dad said it was just growing pains but when did Dad ever know shit? So Klaus kept him company and pushed the hair back from his sweaty forehead and told him stories, and when Klaus got back from that shitty, shitty mausoleum for the third time, or when Dad made him sleep in a graveyard or talk to murder victims, just to “make sure he could really talk to ghosts, and keep them coherent enough to retrieve real information,” Ben would hold his hand through it until Klaus got a-fucking-hold of himself and calmed down.

“It’s okay,” he would say, “Just focus on me, not them.”

And then Ben was gone, and he would never hold his hand again and never speak to him again and how could he ever try to summon him after what happened? And then he was there again, in Klaus’ room, a week After, and Klaus had frozen, blunt in his hand - and his eyes had traveled down and down to the gorey, awful mess his stomach made and thought he must be hallucinating, he must be, but Ben had said “no, you’re not,” and then Klaus had started crying and Ben had started crying, and he could never hold his hand again but he could still talk him through shit.

He didn’t know if it was better or worse, having Ben around. He was the only one who could see or hear or speak to him, and if that wasn’t the shittiest luck on the planet. It’s like, you die horribly at a young age, and then you come back as a ghost and the only one you can talk to is your crackhead brother? God, that must suck. Not that Klaus is gonna like, _stop_ using. But he does feel bad about it.

So, he goes and gets absolutely blasted, even though he knows Ben will give him shit for it later, and then some older guy is making eyes at him - he’s reminded, vividly, of the man at the bar five years ago, who had called him pretty and offered to buy him a drink. He wonders if this guy woulda done the same thing, and then decides that he doesn’t care very much. He’s not fourteen anymore, and he’s not underage, and he hasn’t been able to feel Ben, feel anyone, in like three weeks and he’s an adult so he can do whatever he wants.

He doesn’t know if he wants the man to usher him into the bathroom and lock the door behind them - he likes beds a lot, first of all. But he’s too fuckin’ drunk to complain, not when the man’s hands are warm and big and solid, even if they don’t feel quite right, so he leans back against the wall and lets whatever will happen, happen. What happens isn’t something he’s very like, _proud_ of, but it’s not like he ever plans to tell anyone about it. This man doesn’t know who he is; he’s not a kid anymore, and the Umbrella Academy is growing up. They aren’t prancing around in shitty school uniforms anymore.

It’s fast and not very fun, not like he usually likes it to be. He’s had too much to drink and not enough to eat, not enough water, not enough sleep, and his head hurts, the tile cool against his forehead where he’s pressed against the wall.

The man is talking, something that would probably be offensive or like, degrading or whatever if he was sober enough to care. But he doesn’t - and to be honest, it isn’t hot, or anything at _all_ , not like that kind of talk is supposed to be. The way he’s saying it, all stilted, like he’s trying too hard but just doesn’t have the confidence for it, is fucking _funny._

 _Shit,_ but he’s gonna lose it. The guy seems to really get into it, calling him names that just… fall flat, and then Klaus does lose it. He laughs against the wall, eyes sliding shut.

“Jesus,” he breathes, voice hitching, “This isn’t a porno, man, calm down. I’m tryna enjoy myself, here.”

He thinks it’s pretty funny: fucking in a bathroom in the back of a shitty bar he’s been popping in and out of since he was fourteen, with a guy twice his age who fucks like a total amateur, even though he should have _way_ more experience than Klaus does. It’s funny! It’s like, a sitcom moment, except for that he doesn’t think a sitcom like this would ever be approved by a TV network. Not even HBO, who airs some crazy shit.

The man, though, doesn’t think it’s very funny. Before Klaus knows it, there’s a hand gripping the back of his neck, fingers digging into his trachea, and his cheek is pressed against the tile and he can’t move. “This funny to you?” the man says, and this time he sounds much more confident in his words; Klaus would be proud of him if he wasn’t choking him without even talking about it beforehand, “This fucking funny to you?”

The man lets up the pressure, and Klaus coughs, and then, because he’s always had poor impulse control, says: “Yes.”

Nothing happens that he doesn’t want to happen, because for all the shit Dad put him through, he did teach him how to defend himself. He never took to it as well as Diego or Luther or even Allison, but he still had the basics down. Shit, but there was a laminated poster demonstrating how to _gouge someone’s eyes out_ hanging in one of the hallways. No wonder they all turned out so fucked up.

So, if he really wanted to, he could gouge the guy’s eyes out and get out of here. But he doesn’t, so it’s fine. He’s definitely feeling something, which is what he wanted in the first place. Life just has a way of throwing curveballs at you; nothing you can do but adapt. That’s what Dad used to say.

He laughs again, because of course his fucked up head would think about Dad at a time like this; Klaus can picture the disappointed, dismissive look on his face that he always wore. He wonders what his shitty dad would do if he found out about this; if he would even care, or if he would just fuck off to his study like he usually did.

He close his eyes against the cold, boring, white tile, and decides it doesn’t matter. It’s not like he’s ever planning to see him again anyways. The next time he’ll be anywhere near that crazy fucker is, hopefully, at his funeral.

 

When Vanya publishes her book, it kinda fucks with his love life for a while. For one, people are recognizing him more than he wants them to - and how the fuck they do that, he doesn’t know. Vanya was not nice about a lot of things in her book, but she was at least kind enough to not like, add in a pic of him as an adult. He doesn’t even know where she would get a picture of him - his first thought would maybe be his mugshot (of which he’s had many taken over the years, each one better than the last), but only probably Diego would be able to get ahold of that, and there’s no way in hell he’d ever do that for their sister. Probably.

He’s in the middle of trying to get in on with some guy at a party, when the guy pulls back and asks if he was “that umbrella kid who sees ghosts and came out on live TV,” and still manages to keep it up throughout that whole conversation.

He’s about to get the pegging Of A Lifetime, when the girl says: “Hey, I know you!” and then asks if there are any ghosts hanging around the shitty motel they’re renting for the night.

It’s like… not fun. Throughout their childhood - and far into adulthood - Allison thrived in the spotlight. She soaked it up like she was made for it, charming everyone around her. Plus, she had the ability to alter reality whenever and however she wanted, which probably helped. But she was - is - a good actor. You can’t Rumor that kind of talent.

And it’s not like Klaus doesn’t _like_ being the center of attention, it’s just that he likes being the center of good, fun attention. Like the “wow you’re cute, wanna bang?” kind of attention, not the “wow you had a fucked up childhood, wanna bang?” kind.

So, he’s not really liking this Post-Book life he’s living right now. He’s annoyed more than anything - not completely pissed off like Diego is - but he is pretty upset that she wrote about Ben, and especially Ben’s death, in so much detail. She didn’t have to do that. She could roast the shit out of dear old daddy all day and night, but there was no reason to add those kinds of details in for shock value.

But, as with most things, the book is published, the controversy floats around for a bit, and then things die back down. Six months after the fact and who gives a fuck anymore? Not Klaus. He’s put as much distance between himself and All That as possible - as much as he can with his dead brother sticking around, coming to rehab with him, and ultimately being disappointed when Klaus doesn’t stay sober.

For a long time, he’s able to keep all the crazy shit out of his life - all the ghosts and like, childhood trauma, or whatever you’d call it. He tried to go to therapy once, because the leader of his rehab group said it might be a good idea, but it didn’t help much. He only went to one session. Usually, he liked to talk; he liked it when people listened to him talk. When faced with the undivided attention of some rando with a degree in psychology who was supposed to tell him what was wrong with him, he found that he didn’t want to.

Plus, it’s not like it was a secret, what was wrong with him. It started and ended with the sadistic fucker who adopted him and locked him in mausoleums and got his brother killed. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that, just like he didn’t need anyone to tell him why he didn’t like small spaces or staying sober.

He doesn’t need anyone to tell him how to deal with his own shit. Besides, he thinks he’s self-medicating just fine.

He lives the next few years in a haze. Has boyfriends and a girlfriend or two, but none of them ever last very long. He just not a very, what would you call it, commitment-oriented type of person. He doesn’t like being tied down too long, even if that means he’s not very stable like, financially or environmentally. Is that the world you would use? Environmentally? What he means is that he doesn’t always have a place to stay, and hardly ever long term.

But he’s fine like that! He prefers it! He’s got regular dealers, a regular rehab center, a few regular EMT’s he knows by name - and shit, if he thinks about it for more than a few seconds, that’s kinda fucked up. 

He takes girls home. He takes boys home. He mainly goes with girls and boys back to their homes instead of his, because it’s easier that way, and it’s easier to leave whenever he needs to.  
  
He’s not — he’s not like, _slutty_ , he’s not a slut, like his old boyfriend used to say, like one of his dealers said, like some of the guys he takes home call him, in the middle of it all. He just... he just likes to have fun. He likes to get fucked up and dance and have a merry old time, and sometimes that involves going to somebody’s something somewhere and having amazing, drugged up love-making sessions. So what? Everyone’s doing it.  
  
Sometimes the drugs make it less enjoyable than he was hoping for — never fuck on heroin, he learns the hard way when he falls dead asleep in the middle of it all, needle on the bedside table next to them. It was pretty funny when he woke up, but it had freaked the guy he was with out pretty bad, even though he was the one who gave Klaus the heroin in the first place — said gimme your arm, with his hands halfway down Klaus’s pants, and Klaus had given it over eagerly, because he was good at following directions when he wanted to be. _You’ve got pretty veins,_ he had said, tracing the ones on his wrist. _What the fuck does that even mean?_ Klaus had laughed, and the guy had shrugged and said _I dunno, but you do._

Sometimes the drugs make him slow, or hazy, and not the good kind of hazy where he feels like he’s flying. The bad kind, where he’s not all the way there and he’s painfully aware of it, and his body’s not doing what he wants it to because it’s just shaking all up instead. He’s not sure if he’s in the mood or not, not sure if he wants it very much, and maybe he says so and maybe he doesn’t but it doesn’t matter because it happens anyways. And that’s whatever, that’s whatever, it ends and he waits for the high to come down and then shoots up with something better.  
  
It would be some kind of poetic self-destruction, the kind you write about in pretty books or watch in movies, if only it was a little more poetic. If Klaus was a poetic person. But he’s not poetic, he’s just high, and everyone thinks they’re fucking Picasso when they’re high.

Every time he gets out of rehab, the guy at the front desk - Klaus’ favorite employee, ‘cause he always gives him his shit back - says something like “We’ll see you soon, Klaus.”

It didn’t used to be like that, but somewhere over the years, everyone involved had just kind of… resigned to the fact that Klaus would probably be in and out of this joint until he OD’ed like, _permanently,_ the kind you couldn’t fix by pumping his stomach or shocking his heart back into action. His body’s gonna give out someday, but until that day comes, he’s living his life to the fullest. 

Or something.

 

He meets Dave by accidentally catapulting into the past after being kidnapped and tortured for like, two days. They look at each other, both confused as fuck, and then everyone is yelling and someone tosses Klaus a pair of pants and he’s never held a gun in his life, but he’s holding one now. Dave shakes his hand, and smiles at him, and Klaus’ heart skips a beat. 

It’s not the most romantic thing in the world - definitely not romcom worthy -  but Klaus thinks it belongs in a movie anyways.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comment to wish me luck on my thesis defense next week......so glad we cld go on this journey together :")
> 
> next chapter should be out soon, pls come [bother me](http://gaynasas.tumblr.com/) in the meantime


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not like you,” Dave says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my thesis defense went really well! so happy we could go on this journey together lmao. anyway i wrote a solid half of this sitting in my car in the dark, listening to hozier's new album, so that's where i'm at emotionally right now

 

“Holy shit,” Dave says, leaning up against the bar table and watching Klaus throw back two shots in half as many minutes. “You can really hold your liquor for such a small guy.”

Klaus chokes on nothing, on the sound of Dave’s voice, on how he’s violently reminded of Diego teasing him because while he and Luther grew up and out, Klaus just grew up. Like a tree, or something. 

“I’m not small,” he says, trying not to smile like an absolute dumbass,  “I’m just… compact.”

“Compact,” Dave repeats, and his tone makes something in Klaus weak. Jesus fuck, he’s hardly known the guy like a day, he tells himself. Calm the fuck down.

“Yeah. We can’t all be built like a fuckin’ brick.”

“What, so I’m a brick?” Dave laughs.

“Your words,” Klaus says, and throws back another shot to distract himself from how much he likes Dave’s laugh. 

He popped into existence in this decade with nothing but his jacket (not regulation) and a towel (also not regulation), and all they gave him were some boring, regulation uniform clothes, so he had to go shopping. Which was hard to do, considering he’d never been here before, and it was a foreign country, and he had no idea what men even  _ wore _ in the sixties other than tie-dye crop tops and turtlenecks and like, bell-bottoms. God knows he could never wear bell-bottoms. 

He had found some stuff, eventually, and found something to trade for it all, ‘cause he didn’t really have any money since he had just spent the last few days tied to a chair being waterboarded and shit. He didn’t exactly have time to grab his wallet.

He ends up in the nearest bar because of course he does, and Dave is there because of course he is, and they order shots and turn it into some sort of contest because of course they do, it’s the sixties and they’re at war. What else are they gonna do?

So they’re both drunk, and then they’re dancing with some pretty girls and then they’re dancing with each other. It’s like something in a movie, the way Klaus feels. The way Dave looks, the way Dave is looking at him, like he’s the only person in the room. Everything’s going all slow-motion, or maybe that’s just the whiskey, and the music is running all up his spine, the same way it did at his first party way back when he was fourteen and somehow dumber than he is now. 

He doesn’t know if anyone’s looked at him like this before. And if they have, he’s definitely never looked back. 

They find a back corner, just like he and the boy with brown eyes did back at that party, except Dave doesn’t press him into the wall this time. He touches Klaus’ face, all drunk and clumsy, and Klaus leans into it like the touched-starved motherfucker he is, especially when he’s fucked up. 

“Hey,” Dave says, “Where’re you from?”

Klaus blinks at the question. “What d’you mean?”

“You’re definitely not from around here. You’re nothin’ like I’ve ever seen.”

Klaus doesn’t know what to say to that, because he’s everything that everyone’s ever seen. “I dunno,” he says, “I dunno where I’m from. My old man adopted me when I was a baby - like, a  _ baby _ baby.”

“What other kinda baby is there?” Dave laughs, eyebrows all scrunched up. “You talk kinda funny.”

Twenty first century… lingo? Phrasing? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to speak like anything else, either. 

“Like you said,” he says, and Dave is closer than he realized, attention all on him. Like the therapist he went to that one time, but a thousand times better, ‘cause Klaus thinks he actually wants his attention, “I’m not from around here.”

“You grow up in the states?”

“Yeah. You?”

Dave smiles, lopsided and fuckin’ adorable, “New York, born and raised.”

“Like Captain America,” Klaus says, like a complete dumbass. When the fuck was Captain America first created, anyways? Did he exist in the sixties?

Luckily, he does, because Dave huffs a soft laugh, like he’s afraid to disturb the quiet, careful space they’ve made for themselves, cut off from everyone else. “I don’t know about that. I ain’t that handsome.”

“Sure you are,” Klaus says, and he tilts forwards just a bit, watching Dave’s face. Jesus H Fucking Christ, if he’s reading this wrong, he thinks he’ll probably just combust on the spot.

He isn’t. Reading it wrong, that is. Because Dave finally, finally gets all up close, in his space, right where Klaus wants him to be. He’s all strong and radiant looking and shit - better than that asshole with the brown eyes, better than that fucker in the bathroom at the bar, better than any of the randos he’s met at parties. Klaus thinks he could look at him all day, if Dave would let him. If Klaus was any sort of artist, he’d want to immortalize him on paper, or in paint, or in a long, romantic ass poem.

“Not like you,” Dave says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone like you.”

“What does that even mean?” Klaus asks, oddly breathless, and then Dave is kissing him, so it doesn’t matter much anyways. Dave can say whatever the hell he wants, as long as he keeps kissing him like this.

His head spins, in that good way that means you’re tipsy and having fun. Dave kisses soft, nothing like the hard, pressing shit he’s used to. He tilts Klaus’ chin up gently, like he doesn’t wanna push him, and his hand is warm and solid. The calluses on his palms, on his thumb, trace the curve of Klaus’ jaw, his neck, and he decides that he’s gonna combust right now anyways. 

It’s like magic. The kind of shit you see in movies, with fireworks in the background, except instead of fireworks it’s a soft, jazzy kind of music, and instead of a big screen, it’s just them. It’s just theirs. Dave kisses him soft and slow and drunk as all hell, and Klaus feels warm and full and spilling all over. All alive, like he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

There are no ghosts here, even though they’re at war and there should be hundreds. It’s just him, and Dave, and the music thrumming under their skin. 

Klaus sighs deep into Dave’s mouth, and he feels, inexplicably, intoxicatingly, in all form of cliche, at home. 

 

The actual War side of things is not something Klaus is ready for. He knows that — he’s sure Dave know that, just like he knows that the war need all bodies they can get, he tells him, and so Klaus is gonna have to fight. 

What are we fighting for? Klaus asks. Like, what’s the reason? World War Two was Nazi’s and shit.

Dave, for all he’s radiant, seems to shrink. I don’t know, he says. We’re just fighting. 

Why’re you here? Klaus asks after a moment, because Dave is not the kind of person who shoots other people and likes it.

I had to, he says. I had to… to make my mama proud, even if she doesn’t love me anymore. I had to get rid of all the wrong. He looks at Klaus, then, and he looks so sad. But I can’t. It don’t feel wrong when I’m with you. 

And shit, Klaus wishes it wasn’t the fuckin’ sixties, where homophobia was rampant and you could be… kicked out of the army or something, Klaus doesn’t know. He does know that sometimes Dave will put a hand on his arm when he’s being too… gay? When he’s walking too loosely, when he’s watching someone too closely, when he smiles too much. Klaus would be offended — still sort of is — if he didn’t know Dave was trying to help him. Klaus is not the kind of person built for war. He’s lithe and soft and likes boys and wearing skirts and tripping on acid and popping pills. He thinks they had acid in the sixties, right? Opioids, too? 

The point is, Dave has been learning how to hide these parts of him all his life. From his family, his friends, himself. Klaus has been learning how to do the opposite — not even learning, really. Just doing it, because he could, because he wanted to, because he didn’t care. He didn’t  _ have _ to care, because if he got beat up in some alley for being a Dirty Gay or whatever, it would most likely actually be considered a crime.

He doesn’t know the policies here; he doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t wanna see the look on Dave’s face. So he swallows down the part of him that wants to say fuck it and do whatever the hell he wants, and listens when Dave warns him to pull back. 

His first time in the trenches, a few miles out from camp, he almost fucking dies. Like, almost gets blown up or some shit! For real! 

There’s gun fire and shit’s exploding and Dave stuck close of him because of course he did; there not at the front lines but they’re close. Close enough that Klaus should not be here, green as he is, rookie as he is — Klaus hasn’t had any sort of V-Card for a long, long time, but he wishes he didn’t have to pop his war cherry like this. He wishes he didn’t have to pop it at all. The thought— “war cherry”, he mutters to himself, and suddenly yearns for Ben — almost makes him laugh. But he’s not trying to sneak up the stairs on acid. He’s in a trench in the middle of fucking Vietnam. He’s not supposed to be here, but here he is anyways. Story of his fucking life, right? 

The gunfire is much closer, and Klaus yelps on instinct, cries out at the sound and how fucking close it is. Dave claps a hand over his mouth, pressing hard and firm, and holds him still. 

“Please,” he whispers, “I know you’re scared as fuck, but you’ve gotta be quiet. Okay?” Dave jostles him a little, snaps him out of his shock. “Okay?” He asks again, and Klaus nods against the palm of his hand. 

They stay like that for a long time, the two of them pressed together in the trench, waiting to be blown up or found and shot or whatever the hell else happens in things like this. He was never a big fan of war stories. 

Neither of those things happen. Instead, they make it back to camp, trudging along with the rest of the sorry bastards who made it, and don’t even bother trying to eat or debrief or whatever. 

Klaus has claimed a cot next to Dave’s, because of course he has. He doesn’t wanna sleep next to some rando, who might find out he like boys and try to strangle him or something. He doesn’t know the protocol for those things, and he does not want to find out. 

“Hey,” Dave says, because Klaus is jittery, because he hasn’t had a hit in days, because he hasn’t found anything. He hasn’t had the free time to find anything. He hasn’t built up the courage to ask Dave where he can find anything. He’s never really had a problem, necessarily, with people knowing about his drug habits. Mostly because most of the people he knew, he knew  _ because _ of those habits. 

Dave, though, is different. He isn’t a dealer or a junkie or a rehab worker. He’s someone beautiful, and normal and not fucked up, who looks at Klaus like he’s something more than someone who is always looking for their next hit. Klaus is not that person. He doesn’t really want Dave to figure that out. 

But he’s jittery, from nerves or withdrawal or the fact that he can see Rodriguez, one of the men who sleeps in their tent, standing in the corner of the tent, next to his bed, with five bullet holes in his chest and dripping blood all down his uniform shirt. He looks confused, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, or maybe doesn’t know what happened to him. 

It reminds Klaus of Ben’s shocked face, of Ben starting to cry when Klaus started to cry. Except Ben had already been dead a week when he finally found Klaus. Rodriguez has only been dead a few hours. 

When Rodriguez raises his head, Klaus looks away as quickly as he can. It always starts with eye contact — as soon as they catch him looking at him, catch him  _ seeing _ them, he’s fucked. Because then they know, and they try to make themselves known. They ask him to do shit that he can’t do, that want him to listen to things he doesn’t want to listen to, they never shut the hell  _ up _ ! Once they know that he can see them, they don’t leave him alone.

Rodriguez catches his eye just Klaus he looks away. His own eyes widen, and Klaus’ heart drops. Shit. 

He needs a hit. Of acid, of weed, of heroin, of anything. A shot, maybe. Shit, he’d take some cold medicine, some painkillers to knock him out so he doesn’t have to deal with the ghost of a soldier he hardly knew. His hands won’t stop shaking. Dave clutches them tight, startling Klaus back into his body. 

“Klaus?” He asks, “Are you okay?”

Klaus doesn’t know how to answer without throwing up or like, crying or something. And he definitely can’t cry — not in public like this. He’s heard guys crying, outside or under the blankets, because it’s only acceptable to cry when you’re alone, or something dumb and manly like that. But he doesn’t wanna put them on the spot, doesn’t wanna draw attention with his dramatic, crybaby bullshit. 

He risks a glance up. Rodriguez is standing right there, in front of him, looking straight at him. He opens his mouth to speak, but he can’t, because there’s blood streaming down his neck, too. Klaus didn’t see because he was too busy trying not to look - it looks like a bullet shot right through. His trachea and windpipe and whatever the fuck else is in your throat. He tries to speak again, but all it does is make this horrible gurgling noise that makes Klaus shiver. 

“Klaus,” Dave says again. Klaus’s head snaps back again, and he watches Dave glance behind him, in the direction Klaus was just looking. He swivels back around, eyebrows all drawn up in this concern that makes Klaus ache. “What’s wrong?”

Klaus just shakes his head. He can feel the dead soldier still looking at him, like he has some way to fix him, like he can possibly understand what he fuck he’s trying to say with his bleeding vocal chords. Well, Klaus thinks hysterically, at least this one won’t be able to yell at him.

“Do you,” he finally starts, and feels Dave looking at him intently, “Do you have anything?”

“Anything…?” 

“Y’know, anything to - to take. People were really into pill-popping shit these days, right? Or - or heroin, or whatever.” He thinks he read that somewhere. Weren’t drugs a big thing during this war? Or is he already trippin?

“You wanna get high?” Dave asks. Some-fucking-how, he doesn’t sound like anyone who’s ever asked him that same question. He doesn’t sound judgy, or annoyed, or anything else. He sounds concerned. Which is. Weird. Weird. Makes Klaus feel like he wants to disappear and expand at the same time. Maybe he could decide if his hands would stop shaking.

They don’t, though, so he just squeezes Dave’s hand tighter, and nods. 

“I just—I just need—I haven’t had anything in days. I can’t go through withdrawal out here, y’know?”

Dave looks at him a moment longer, and bites his lip. “I can ask Rod—“ he cuts himself off when Klaus flinches, because of course he does, and of course Klaus can’t handle anything, because of course Rodriguez’s ghost makes that awful gurgling noise again at the sound of his own name. “Oh, shit, Rodriguez didn’t make it, huh?” 

Klaus breathes in deep, and lets it out. “I can—I can ask someone, Dave, don’t worry about it. I’ll… figure it out.”

He moves to get up, but Dave doesn’t let go of his hands to let him. “Hey,” he says, soft but firm, “I got it. I ain’t ever use that shit myself, but plenty of the guys here do.” 

And damn, if that isn’t some of the most romantic shit someone’s ever done for Klaus — digging up some weed or heroin for him even though he doesn’t do that shit, maybe never even smoked a joint. Klaus would gush about it more if his body wasn’t shaking so fucking bad. 

Dave comes back a little later, and walks Klaus out of the tent and back behind a wall somewhere. “Don’t want any of the higher ups to see,” he says, and Klaus just nods. 

It’s just weed, that Dave gives him, and he tries not to wish for something stronger because Dave went through all the trouble of finding it for him. So Klaus rolls it out and lights in up and relaxes as best as he can against the wall, eyes closed tight against the dry night air. 

“What do I owe you?” He asks quietly, breathing out slow and gradual. It burns the back of his throat in a way weed hasn’t in a while, but he forces himself not to cough. 

“You don’t owe me nothing, Klaus.”

Klaus shakes his head, enjoying the way it’s already a little bit spinny. He was afraid he’d built up too much of a tolerance, but twenty first century grass must be  _ way _ dumbed down, ‘cause this shit is  _ strong _ . He doesn’t know if Rodriguez followed them out, but he doesn’t really care to check. After he finishes this joint he won’t have to, and the thought makes him feel a pathetic, unbelievable relief. 

“Nah, you saved my ass,” Klaus insists, “And you found me some  _ strong _ shit. I gotta—I gotta owe you  _ something _ .” 

That makes Dave look sad, and Klaus doesn’t like it when Dave looks sad like that. His eyebrows droop down, his eyes all dark and super fucking emotive. How he got this far without everyone reading the heart he wears on his sleeve, Klaus doesn’t know. Maybe no one’s been looking close enough. 

“Klaus,” he sighs again, but Klaus cuts him off this time.

“What about a kiss?” He asks, voice low. “I could give you that.”

Dave’s face relaxes into something like relief, probably now that Klaus isn’t acting like he’s one word away from shaking himself to pieces, and his mouth curves up into as much of a smile as either of them are gonna get right now. 

“I guess I could accept that,” he says, and Klaus loves the way his voice sounds when he whispers like that.

Dave, ever the cautious one, glances behind him to make sure they’re really alone, and then puts his hand on Klaus’ chin, the same place if went back in that bar, like it’s meant to be there, and he kisses him soft and slow just the same. Even though Klaus is yearning for something harder, deeper, something he’s used to, he relaxes against the wall, and lets himself go slow. 

 

Klaus does think about going back. He still has that stupid briefcase tucked under his bed; he knows where it is at all times. He knows he’s like, out of time here. He doesn’t really belong here; he’s a twenty first century man, and he’s not cut out for shit like this. Plus, Ben isn’t here — for the first night or two, Klaus was hurt, thought that maybe Ben had gotten tired of hanging around him for so long. The he remembered that Ben hadn’t even been  _ born _ yet, let alone died. It’s so odd, not being able to glance back at him and share a Look whenever anyone does some dumb shit. 

He knows the end of the world is coming, and that it might end up coming without him. Or something. He doesn’t know how time travel works, he just knows that it’s decades before the End Of Times, or whatever the fuck it is that’s got Five so twisted up all the time, and he’s having a better time here than he has in years, back in the future. 

He doesn’t wanna go back to the future quite yet — and shit, that movie doesn’t even exist yet; can he be credited with coming up with it first, if it hasn’t even been thought up by the director at this point in time? Or is they cheating? Who even cares, he decides, drinking in the way the muscles of Dave’s back move as he runs. He has a very nice back. And a very nice face, and a very nice The Rest Of His Body And Soul, but right now Klaus is thinking about his man’s back. 

Someone blows a whistle, startling him back into action. It’s a hot fucking day, the back of his neck singeing under the sun, and he wonders if this is what it’s like to be some greasy teen in high school, getting caught staring at their crush in gym class. He’s seen that in movies before. He wonders if high school in the… fifties?... is the same as high school in the two thousands. He’ll have to ask Dave what his high school experience was like, even thought Klaus didn’t have one of his own.

Some guy - new in country, even newer than Klaus - eyes him weird when he steps up next to him. Klaus is Very familiar with that type of look. Shit, he was being too obvious again. He feels like everything he does, no matter how innocuous, always just ends up screaming hello?? homosexual alert??? arrest this man immediately??? He hasn’t been arrested yet, no matter how many weird looks he gets, because this is war, like Dave said, and it needs all the bodies it can get. 

So, because he is perpetually a dumbass, Klaus winks at him. The man reels backwards, eyes wide, shoulders drawing back like he’s about to swing out and hit him. Dave catches the guy by the arm before he can, pulling him up short.

“Is there a problem?” Dave asks, voice all commanding and shit. He has an air about him - kind of like Luther but, you know, infinitely better and hotter - that makes people want to listen to him. Or maybe that’s just Klaus. 

Still, the guy looks between the two of them, all suspicious and just absolutely reeking of homophobia, and stands down. “No,” he says, “There’s no problem.”

Ugh, but Klaus just wants to like, leap into Dave’s arms or something romantic like that - ‘cause that was a super romantic gesture, right? Swooping in to save him from the Big Bad Homophobe?

The look on Dave’s face, though, stifles Klaus’ smile. “What did you do?” he asks. Klaus is struck by how sudden the similarities between him and Luther jump out. 

“Nothing,” he says, maybe a tad bit too defensive. “He was just lookin’ at me weird.” 

Dave sighs, and the similarities end as suddenly as they started. “Jesus,” he says, taking Klaus, miraculously, at his word, “How’ve you even lived this long, acting like you do?”

That makes Klaus laugh, probably a little too loud, which probably just prove’s Dave’s point. “A whole lotta dumb luck. Maybe some divine intervention.”

That last part is bullshit, because the most divine thing in his life is probably the way he keeps testing God, but Dave doesn’t know that. Dave takes him at his word, and maybe that’s what does Klaus in, in the end.

 

Klaus knows he’s annoying; it comes with the junkie territory. He’s got poor impulse control even when he’s sober, and he hasn’t been sober since he was a teenager, so you can imagine what his impulse control it like, now. 

Dave makes him want to slow down. Makes him want to think for a moment before doing whatever the hell he wants - because where they are,  _ when _ they are, that shit’s dangerous. Klaus can’t fit his hand into Dave’s under the table during meals, because if someone caught them doing that, they could be kicked out of the army or like, maybe killed for it or something. Talk about the Dark Ages. And that’s the only kind of life Dave’s known - this hiding around, sneaking around, always looking over your shoulder kinda life, and Klaus just thinks that’s so fucking sad. 

When it’s just the two of them, alone, out by a well they went to get water from but started fucking around instead, Klaus watches Dave come alive. He’s a quiet person, when he’s with a crowd, doesn’t draw attention to himself. Away from all that, Klaus thinks he’s goddamn beautiful. 

He’s never felt like…  _ this _ about somebody. Usually, it’s all about how the other person makes him feel. The boy with the brown eyes made him feel pretty, and desirable, and helped him trip for hours, but Klaus never really thought about how he made the boy feel. If he made him feel anything at all, and if maybe that’s why he never called. With Dave, it’s like… it’s like. It’s like, Klaus wants to make  _ him _ feel good, feel confident, feel like he’s every bit as strong and beautiful and shit as he is. He wants to watch Dave come alive when they’re alone like this, just for him. 

“What do you plan to do, after?” Dave asks.   
  
Klaus pauses, mid-smoke, back pressed against the cool stone. He lets the cigarette catch on his lip, and holds it there for a moment, because—well, he never meant to end up here in the first place. How do you plan for the end of something you never meant to begin? There was no After The War, before, because the war was already over.   
  
“Dunno,” he says, deciding to be honest; Dave makes him want to be honest, to be open, to be real, “I haven’t really thought about it.”   
  
“Ever?”   
  
Klaus shrugs, “Never really meant to be here in the first place.”   
  
Dave hums in vague understanding. “I wasn’t drafted,” he says, “But that’s only ‘cause I joined up last minute. My mama kicked me out; I didn’t know where else to go.”   
  
It makes Klaus ache, suddenly, makes him feel lonely at the thought of Dave being lonely. Damn, is this what empathy feels like? he thinks, only half joking. Dear Old Dad never taught them anything about that, so he isn’t quite sure.    
  
“I wasn’t drafted, either,” he says, because he can’t just come out and say ‘I accidentally time traveled’. “But I kinda just... wound up here. I wind up all sorts of places.”   
  
“Yeah,” Dave says, looking at him with those bright, searching eyes, “You strike me as a wanderer.”   
  
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”   
  
Dave smiles, “It is. Seems like you can’t be tied down. But I’ve gotta wonder—don’t you ever get tired of moving?”   
  
“Sometimes,” he admits after a moment, because Dave makes him want to admit, “But I’m not sure how to stop.”   
  
Dave’s hand, warm and solid, slides down his arm, his wrist, curling around his palm. “I can help you with that,” he says, all charming and warm and solid, too, “I’m very good at holding on.”     
  
It’s overwhelming, and real, and Klaus is used to the first part but not the second, so he does what he does best. “Officer,” He gasps, mock-affronted, “Are you propositioning me?”   
  
Instead of rolling his eyes or telling him to be serious for once in his life, Dave laughs. Like Klaus has ever said anything funny in his life — okay, he has, because he’s a  _ super _ funny person, especially when he’s high.    
  
“If you want me to be,” He says, rolling with the mood shift like he’s right on track, like he’s on Klaus’ crazy wavelength. It makes Klaus feel all warm and jittery and happy, like he’s a kid with a crush.    
  
“Maybe I do,” He says, bold as ever.    
  
Dave slides his hand, warm and solid and big — he has a soldier’s hands, calloused and firm and everything Klaus is not — up Klaus’ arm and down his shoulder, resting against the crook of his neck. Klaus’ heart beats like a sixteen year old about to pop his cherry. Christ, he thinks, and then stops thinking, because Dave’s hand is in his hair, now.    
  
“I think that could be arranged,” Dave says. He leans in, and Klaus melts into him once again.   


 

He shoots up with heroin to fall asleep one night, after a real bad day. There were airplanes, and maybe bombs, he thinks, and he watched some guy get his leg blown off and then watched his ghost try to crawl its way across the battlefield to meet him. It’s always the looking, the fucking eye contact. Everything’s So Much out here, there’s alway So Much going on, that when his high starts to wear off he can’t always tell the difference between the living and the dead.

He doesn’t like heroin very much - it’s never been his first choice, or second choice, or even his third choice -  but it gets the job done. He wakes up to Dave shaking him, dark eyes blown wide and worried. 

“Hey,” he says, “Klaus.”

“Yeah,” Klaus drawls, because yeah, that’s his name alright. 

“You’ve been out for a while. You all right?”

“Yeah,” Klaus says, and his legs are heavy as fuck when he tries to swing them over the edge of the bed, so he stops trying. The tent is empty. “Where’s everyone at?”

“Rescue team went out to look for Cooper. They think he might’a gotten stuck under all that rubble.”

Cooper. Cooper. Oh, Klaus thinks. The leg guy.

He shakes his head, “Nah,” he says, “Cooper’s dead.”

Dave blinks down at him, eyebrows drooping all sad. “Shit, Klaus. Did you see it?”

“Yeah,” Klaus groans, pressing his palms against his eyes, squeezed shut. “Crawlin’ at me. Shouldn’t’ve looked at him.”

Dave makes a sad noise, and sits down on the shitty little cot, reaching for Klaus’ hand like it’s a magnet. There’s no one here, so Klaus holds tight, holds on, doesn’t let go.

“Hey,” he says impulsively, heart beating in his chest. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

Klaus swallows, and then laughs, and then says, “You’re gonna think I sound like a crackhead or something, but…” he cuts himself off, because why is he doing this? Why does he want Dave to know how fucked in the head he is? Is it not enough to just be a junkie? “Nevermind. Nevermind.”

“No,” Dave says, all soft and shit, soft like he is when there’s no one else here. “Tell me.”

“It’s crazy.”

“Half the shit that comes outta your mouth is crazy,” Dave says, shocking a laugh out of him. “I’m sure I can handle a little more.”

“I dunno about that one,” Klaus says. “You’re gonna think I’m - like, actually crazy, but I’m not. I’m really not.” 

Dave looks at him expectantly, like Klaus isn’t gonna fuck him his whole like, worldview and/or ruin their Maybe Sort Of Relationship with his ‘I See Dead People’ Bomb. 

Klaus takes a deep breath, blames his newest bad choice on the heroin, and says, “So. Do you believe in ghosts?”

Dave looks surprised, obviously. “Uh, yeah, I guess. My mama always used to say my grandma’s house was haunted, had been since she was a kid.”

Klaus nods. Okay, okay, good starting point. Just… ease into it.

“I see… ghosts. Of people. Who, you know, died. I’ve been seein’ ‘em since I was a kid. I’m not crazy,” he adds again,  just to make sure. He’s sure that makes him sound even more crazy than he sounded before - like,  _ that sounds like something a crazy person would say, _ type of shit. God, Klaus hates his little-to-none impulse control. So much for easing into it, he thinks, and just keeps talking instead.

Dave, for his part, takes it gracefully. “It must be,” he says slowly, after Klaus has got the gist of it out and into the dry, open air, “I mean, it must take some pressure off your shoulders, knowing what happens at the end.”

Klaus laughs. Of course Dave would find a good way to spin things. “I guess so. Fuck, how do you not think I’m mental?”

Dave smiles like he’s embarrassed, but doesn’t look away, “There’s always been somethin’... weird, or - or supernatural about you. You just - popped in, like you appeared outta nowhere. Sometimes, I thought to myself that maybe someone had sent you down here, just for me. Divine intervention.”

Klaus feels like he’s floating. Or falling. Or flying, but his body’s still too heavy to fly. Dave is sitting here, looking like he does, being like he is, and telling him he liked to think that Klaus was what, an angel? Something divine -  _ Klaus _ , something divine. 

“Maybe you’re the crazy one,” he says, weakly.

“You ain’t crazy, sunshine,” Dave says, Dave smiles, and Klaus feels like he’s falling to pieces, or maybe falling into place.

“Don’t call me  _ sunshine _ ,” Klaus says, something almost desperate, “Are we twelve?”   
  
“Why not?” Dave asks, always so open and genuine, “I think it suits you.”   
  
Klaus could laugh at that—nearly does— and something deep inside him just fucking aches and he doesn’t know why. He can’t even to begin to explain to Dave why he could never mean that to someone, why he could never be somebody’s sun, all shiny and happy and - and  _ divine _ and shit.    
  
“I’m not...” He tries, anyways, because Dave makes him want to try. “I could never be... I don’t think I’m fit to be anyone’s sunshine.”   
  
Dave’s eyes are so dark and so pretty and he looks at Klaus like whatever the hell he just said means something, in the long run. Klaus says all sorts of thing, and hardly any of it ever really means anything. Most people know that, but Dave doesn’t know that, and Klaus doesn’t want him to find out.    
  
“Well then maybe you could be my star, instead,” Dave says, “Shining just for me.”   
  
Klaus, inexplicably, feels himself flush. Like he’s eleven again and trying not to make eye contact with the senator’s son. Like he didn’t just tell him that he sees dead people and carries around ghosts like they’re a sickness. He brings his hand up to cover his mouth so he didn’t start laughing, or maybe crying.    
  
“Sure,” he manages, “I think I could do that.”    
  
  


“You ever had any boyfriends before me?” Klaus asks one day, off hand, because he’s curious, and he’s never been one to shy away from something he’s curious about.

“Not any boyfriends,” Dave says, with a silent  _ duh _ at the end that makes Klaus smile. It’s just the two of them, on lookout. There’s not much to look out for, but they won’t say no to whatever privacy they can get.

“Girlfriends?”

“A few. Nothing real serious. My mama wanted me to get married, but none of ‘em ever clicked.”

“I wonder why,” Klaus says, sarcastic. He takes a drag of his cigarette, sadly weed-less, nicotine-only.

Dave smiles ruefully - Klaus never really understood that word, rueful, but looking at Dave’s face, he thinks he gets it.

“I think my mama… I think she knew something was up, for a while. She wanted grandkids real bad, and I just wasn’t giving them to her.”

“How’d she, y’know, find out?” Klaus asks cautiously.

He watches Dave swallow, his throat bobbing. “She… she caught me, with this guy who was visiting family in town.”

“Thought you said you didn’t have any boyfriends before me,” Klaus says, like a dumbass, trying to lighten the mood.

“He wasn’t… I was just curious. I’d been thinking about it for - for a long time, and the opportunity was there. I was just… so stupid about it. Broke my mama’s heart. Then the war broke out. I had to… I had to leave. I had to something to make her proud of me.”

Klaus knows something about that — at least at the beginning, he knew what it was like to want to make your parent proud of you in some way. He was just never very good at it, especially not compared to some of the others, and eventually he just stopped trying. It wasn’t worth it to care anymore — and he was better off not caring. But he can’t say that, and he can’t explain that, and like, his experiences aren’t universal. He tries to picture how it would feel, to let someone down simply by existing. Yeah, okay, he thinks. He understands that. 

“I’m sure you,” He starts, and stops; for all the shit their father taught them, he couldn’t bother to teach them how to comfort someone, “I’m sure you’re making her proud. And if you aren’t, well then. Well then, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.” 

He doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to say or not — he can’t imagine  _ wanting _ to make someone who turned their back on you,  _ proud _ of you. He wanted to make his dad feel a lot of things, after he left home, but none of it was pride. 

Dave sniffs a bit, and Klaus glances away to give him some privacy, but reaches out with the tips of his fingers, to see if Dave wants the contact. He does, tangling their fingers together, hidden against the wall between their bodies. It feels all risqué and dramatic, holding hands out here. Makes him feel young. 

“How ‘bout you?” Dave asks after a few long moment. 

“Hm?”

“You have anyone before me?” 

Klaus resists the urge to burst out laughing — jesus christ, has he had anyone. He catches Dave’s eye, bright and curious, and then it doesn’t feel funny anymore — he just feels vaguely, he doesn’t know, ashamed? Embarrassed? He’s had so many people like, on him, in him, around him, he’s given himself away to so many people, that sometimes he wonders what’s even left to give to Dave.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, huffing a laugh and glancing away; shit, but he’s never been self-conscious like this before, “A few.” 

“Girls? Or boys?”

“Both,” Klaus says, “Mostly boys, though. Used to… it doesn’t matter,” he shakes his head, “There was never anyone like you.”

Dave doesn’t look sad anymore, which Klaus is grateful for, but he looks… delicate. Vulnerable. “What’s that even mean?” 

It’s like an echo, and Klaus bites his tongue to keep from smiling too wide. “It means that you’re one of a kind. No one’s ever… been like  _ this, _ with me, before.” 

“Like this…?”

Klaus licks his lips, resists the urge to reach for another cigarette. “I’m not… well, I’m not really the type of person people wanna spend their life with.” 

“Bullshit,” Dave says, “If we weren’t out here, I’d have to be fighting people off with a broom or some shit.”

Klaus rolls his eyes, and the mood seems to lift back up. It’s crazy, how — how easily they can shift, the two of them as one. “Shut up. I don’t know how you put up with my annoying ass. I’m the type you hit and quit.”

Dave gives that little confused laugh, “What the fuck does  _ that _ mean?” 

“It’s like, y’know, one and done. There’s too much… there’s too  _ much _ of me. I’m not a potential-relationship kinda person.”

“You are to me,” Dave says, like any of that made any sense. 

“And that’s why you, sir, are crazy.” 

Dave shoves his shoulder a bit, lightly, but doesn’t let go of his hand. Klaus bounces back, and wishes they were somewhere else, so he could trace that stupid beautiful smile with his fingers, or maybe with his tongue. 

“I ain’t crazy, sunshine,” he says, and Klaus wants to take all of Dave’s words and wrap them up to keep under his pillow while he sleeps. Sink into his dreams and keep him safe, even in there. 

“Don’t call me that,” he reminds him.

“Right,” Dave says, soft, “My moon and fuckin’ stars, then.”

Klaus doesn’t know if that’s much better, but he takes it anyways.

Dave talks about his life After The War like he wants Klaus to be in it. He talks about showing him his home town and taking him to the movies and “treating him to a real nice, real-life date”, because he apparently doesn’t think getting wasted in the bar or sneaking out to get tattoos count as real dates. “Real dates,” he says, like they’re children, like they’re teens in high school crushing hard or something, some weird, innocent shit Klaus never really got a piece of.    
  
Klaus teases him for it, says: “What can you see in a movie that you can’t see here? I could take you all around the world right now.”    
  
Dave flushes this cute pink color — and he’s the type of person who flushes right down to his neck, all full-body, and he doesn’t think it’s cute but Klaus does so he tells him — and says, “I’m serious, Klaus. I wanna take you out—y’know, treat you right.”   
  
And Christ, that shouldn’t make Klaus feel as jittery as it does, as happy as it does, as fucking scared as it does. What is he supposed to do with that? He has no fucking clue, but that’s fine, because he barely has a fucking clue about anything anymore. He time traveled to 1968 and now he’s falling in love; the world will end someday, far in the distant future, but right now he just has to worry about getting shot or blown up or something. Which isn’t really a step up, but it sure as fuck isn’t a step down.

“Tell me about it,” Klaus says, because he’s a fucking masochist apparently — not that that was ever really a question. 

Dave smiles that lopsided, beautiful smile that Klaus loves. “‘Bout after the war?”

“Yeah.”

“I already told you; you just love the sound of my voice, or what?”

Klaus thinks he has this special ability to make anyone who spends an extended amount of him with him become a little more of a smart ass than they were before — Ben, always calling him on shit he never would have when he was alive, complaining about a tattoo that Klaus was getting in  _ his _ honor, and now Dave. He likes to think he brings out the best in people, when he isn’t pissing them off. 

“Yeah,” he answers honestly, because Dave makes him want to be honest in a way he never wanted to before. “I love the way you sound when you’re happy.”

“I’m always happy when I’m with you,” Dave answers, and shit, okay, honesty was a bad idea. It makes Klaus’ insides melt, makes him want to bottle everything about Dave up and keep it with him forever. 

“So tell me about it,” Klaus says again.

Dave shakes his head a little, like people always do when Klaus says some dumb shit, but he’s smiling, so it’s different.

“Well,” He says, and he drags his hand across the blanket, like he’s tiptoeing with his fingers, and brushes against Klaus’ pinkie, “After it’s all over, I’m gonna take you home. My mama might not like it, but I want her to meet you — I think she might change her mind, if she could just meet you.”

Klaus’ heart breaks a little, “I don’t think  _ I  _ could change her mind.”

“Sure you could.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Than you can’t. I’ll take you out anyways — we’ll go to the movies. There’s this theater in town, real cheap but real nice, and they always have the new blockbusters. I’ll pay for your ticket—“

“Like a gentleman,” Klaus teases, tangling their fingers together slowly, delicately. “Will you do whole ‘arm over your shoulder’ thing, too?”

Klaus had explained that to him the first time they went through this — the classic ‘pretending to stretch as a ploy to wrap my arm around your shoulders’ that Klaus has seen in movies. A boy’s never done that do him before; he’s definitely done…  _ some _ things in the back of a movie theater, but never anything that cute. 

Dave shakes his head in that fond-disbelief, “Yeah, I’ll do the shoulder thing; I’ll be real smooth about it.” 

“A gentleman,” Klaus says again, and Dave shoves him playfully. 

“Afterwards, I’ll take you out to dinner. There’s this little diner that I used to go to all the time. It has the most amazing waffles.”

A man after my own heart, Klaus doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want to interrupt. But  _ finally, _ someone who appreciates breakfast food as much as he does. 

“And there’s this place, just outside of town, where you can lay back on the grass and see the stars.” 

“I’m from the city,” Klaus says, “I’ve never seen the stars all that clearly.”

“Out there, you can see them perfect,” Dave says, his voice gone soft; Klaus leans in to hear him better, and Dave leans in to be heard, to be closer, “And I’ll point to one, the brightest one I can find, and I’ll say: ‘that’s you.’” 

Klaus feels something hot behind his eyes, hit with the full force of  _ something, _ something deep and real and heavy. It’s heavy, but it makes him feel light, makes him feel weightless, the way he did when that boy with the brown eyes pressed the acid to his tongue. The way he does when he’s soaring high, but he hasn’t even touched cocaine in weeks. 

“You’re full of shit,” he chokes out.

“I’m just speakin’ truth, baby. You said you weren’t sunshine, but you’re still a star.”

Klaus shakes his head this time, but he’s smiling, too. “You’re so dramatic. And that’s coming from  _ me. _ ”

“I’m romantic.”

“You’re a gentleman,” Klaus says again. “You gonna wait ‘til the second date to hold my hand?”

“I’m a gentleman,” Dave says, voice low, “But I’m not a saint.”

“Oh? Does that mean you’ll pop my cherry on date number one? Maybe under the stars?”

Dave actually laughs at that. “Klaus, sweetheart, you’re lotsa things, but you ain’t cherry.”

“Everyone loves to roast the hell out of me, huh.” 

He’d had to explain what that meant, too. Dave thought Klaus’ twenty-first century lingo was bizzare and kind of funny - even though he didn’t really know it was from fifty years ahead. Klaus thought his I See Dead People bomb was big enough for now; he didn’t really know how to slip I’m From The Future into a casual conversation without Dave really and truly thinking he’s batshit crazy.

“Someone’s gotta do it,” Dave says and yeah, he’s got way too much of an attitude now.

“I’m just tryna be romantic,” he laughs, “Fuckin’ under the stars - that’s like, Oscar-worthy. Award-winning.”

“If it’s under the stars, it ain’t  _ fuckin’ _ \- that’s called making love.”

Klaus laughs - giggles, like a schoolgirl with a crush. He almost asks  _ what is this, the fifties? _ before he remembers that it kind of is. “Making love under the stars - with Jesus watching and everything?”

Dave pushes at his shoulder again, but doesn’t let go this time; he slides his hand up Klaus’ shoulder to rest in the crook of his neck; his fingers toy with the ends of Klaus’ hair, and Klaus feels like he could melt all over again. 

“Just let me be romantic. I wanna treat you right, away from all this. I don’t wanna… I don’t wanna have to be afraid of someone catching us anymore.”

Klaus’ heart aches all over again, and he wants to reach inside of Dave’s heart and make all his sadness disappear, wants to wipe it away and replace it with the freedom Klaus feels when he’s able to just be himself. He doesn’t know if Dave has ever felt like he could really be himself; Klaus wants to let him.

“Okay,” he says, voice as soft as it can get, “I’ll let you do whatever you want.”

“Only if you want it, too,” Dave says, like what Klaus wants is just as important to him as what he wants.

“I’d do anything you asked me to,” Klaus says, open and bare, “I’d do anything to just - make you happy. I just wanna make you happy.”

“You do,” Dave says, like it’s that simple. “All I want you to do is follow me home.”

“I’ll follow you anywhere,” Klaus says, and shivers, because Dave’s hand are warm and he’s warm, pulling him close and breathing in deep and no, Klaus thinks, that’s what really does him in, in the end. Klaus does follow him, but he never gets the chance to follow him home. 

 

War isn’t pretty. Vietnam, especially, because nobody’s fighting for anything. They’re just fighting to fight, fighting because that’s what you do when you’re at war. 

Klaus sees lots of people die. He’s always seen the dead, so he knows what death looks like — thought he did, maybe. Saw dead children walking around in hospitals, saw dead junkies with infected track marks, wandering around the rehab center like it owed them something. He was getting waffles with Ben once - or Klaus was getting waffles and Ben was mostly watching - when he looked up and saw a woman with her entrails just… out, splattered on the table across from them. He’s seen all sorts of nasty shit. He’s never really had to watch it happen beforehand, though, and then still experience it afterwards. 

He learns how to hold a gun, even if he doesn’t want to; he watches men he eats his meals with get blown up, lose limbs, get shot, all sorts of nasty shit that he never knew to expect because he always fucking hated war movies.

Once, he wasn’t there to watch the guy — Richards — who had the bunk on the other side of Dave’s, get shot in the back; he didn’t know he was dead, and the guy didn’t seem to know it either, and so Klaus held a whole conversation with him until Dave came back with their drinks and asked him who the hell he was talking to. 

Klaus had blinked at him, looked between the two of them, and watched the realization dawn on the guy’s face that nobody else could see him. Klaus hates that part, when they’re freshly dead and don’t know it yet — and he hates that it happens so much because of him. 

“... Richards,” he says, “I thought…”

Dave exhales, heavy. At first, Klaus wasn’t sure if he really believed his Dead People Vision thing, but he thinks Dave hopped on board pretty quick when Klaus saw their dead sergeant hobble in on one leg half an hour before they got the news. 

“Shit,” Dave sighs, “Always thought that bastard was too stubborn to die.” 

Klaus closes his eyes, and takes the drink Dave slips into his hand. This is fucking Vietnam; everyone’s dying, and everyone’s crazy — Klaus isn’t the only one who talks to dead soldiers, these days — and everyone’s fucked up, and nobody cares. Everyone’s just waiting for it to be over. 

“Tell me,” Klaus says, cleaning his throat, “Tell me about after.”

He opens his eyes to see Dave’s tired ones, gazing at him all sad and beautiful, heart on his sleeve, but only for Klaus. Klaus always does this, always asks for this because he’s weak and needs something to hold on to when he can’t hold onto Dave. 

“I think I might wanna be some kinda teacher,” Dave says, and this is new. “I was never very at math, but I loved literature. I think I could be good at that.”

“Nurturing young minds,” Klaus says, mouth tilting up despite how heavy his face feels.

“Building something up instead of shooting it down,” Dave agrees. “Does that sound boring?”

And now Klaus can’t help but smile, small but real, “Nah, Dave. That sounds spectacular.” 

“Maybe we could get a farm or something,” Dave says suddenly — and Klaus follows the change, because that’s what they do: follow each other. They get each other; they roll the same way, they understand each other. Klaus doesn’t think someone has ever understood him and still wanted to stick around afterwards.

“With chickens and shit?” He asks.

“Yeah, with chickens and shit. You like chickens?”

“Never met one in my life,” Klaus huffs a weak laugh, “I mean, I’ve eaten many of them.” 

“We could get some chickens. And maybe a cow or… or a horse.” 

“That’s a pretty big jump. I think we gotta start off small, farmer.” 

“We’ll build it up nice, though,” Dave says, and there’s something in his voice that makes Klaus want to wrap him up forever.

“Yeah,” Klaus agrees, “Real nice.” 

 

They never do get to build it up real nice, because then Dave gets shot and Klaus is screaming and no one can hear him over the gunfire, and Dave’s blood is all over his hands and Dave is dying.

Please, Klaus is begging, sobbing, You didn’t take me home, yet. We gotta go home, you gotta take me to the movies and shit, we gotta — build it up. Please, please, please, god.

And maybe it’s selfish but it’s all Klaus can think: that they were supposed to have more time, that they were supposed to have an After, that Dave was supposed to take them home and they were supposed to go on a real date and make love under the stars instead of fucking in the back of shitty bars and they were supposed to have anything other than this. 

Dave is bleeding so fucking much. It’s warm and awful and Klaus’ hands shake and he doesn’t give a fuck about anything right now other than holding tight, holding at tight as he can, like if he can just get close enough, hold him tight enough, love him hard enough, maybe he can save him. 

He can’t. He can’t save him. Klaus has never been able to save a goddamn thing, especially the ones that he loves. 

 

He takes Dave’s dog tags, and digs out the god forsaken briefcase as soon as they get back to camp. He grips it tight, hands still warm with his sweetheart’s blood, and leaves. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can u tell i want to leave civilization behind and live on a farm w my future wife someday? comment to help my dreams come true & come [talk to me](http://gaynasas.tumblr.com/) about this show


End file.
